


toss you for edinburgh (and other promises)

by leaveanote



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Anal Sex, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, M/M, Missing Scene, Pining Aziraphale (Good Omens), Porn with Feelings, Rimming, Romance, Scene: Globe Theatre 1601 (Good Omens), Sex, it's SO happy it ends so soft i promise, they're switches bitches, well immediately following
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaveanote/pseuds/leaveanote
Summary: Crowley hadn't meant anything by it, Aziraphale knows that (it's very obvious when he's actually flirting). But he still can't stop thinking about it. They have been together twice before, and each time, Aziraphale swore it could not happen again.This time, he tells himself, as he seeks Crowley out after Hamlet, it will be enough. It has to be.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 172
Kudos: 1277
Collections: Best Aziraphale and Crowley, Hot Omens





	toss you for edinburgh (and other promises)

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the title for anyone who isn't familiar: 'toss you' can be a euphemism for sex, specifically rimming, and I haven't been able to get this story out of my head since I heard Crowley say it. And I think Aziraphale would feel exactly the same way.

**The Globe Theatre, 1601**

_ Toss you for Edinburgh. _

He hadn’t meant anything by it. Aziraphale knows that. Well, he didn’t mean anything beyond a wink, a nod, the muted sort of flirting that wouldn’t get any demon in trouble (wouldn’t be anything an angel would be expected to pick up on). 

Aziraphale knows it because when Crowley is really, unabashedly flirting with him, the love pulses from him like a beacon, like a new star blazing in the night. 

This was just another moment in the steady flow of it, really just a casual aside, another line in their gentle banter. The closest they can allow themselves to come.

Well, usually.

It has happened twice before.

Twice, Aziraphale tells himself (not every day, but nearly), is nothing, really. Once could be written off as a mistake, a slip of the tongue. It had been Rome, human frivolity was at a Bacchanalian zenith, and oysters  _ are  _ an aphrodisiac, after all, he can vouch for the verity of that particular tale. The second time, right, well. It’s only  _ fair. _ The first had been so breathtakingly good, but it happened in a rush, a flurry of wine-wet lips and pushed-up togas, hands and thighs and little else (that was all it took, for both of them). There hadn’t been any time to savour it as Aziraphale had been dreaming, so he hadn’t really been permitted to get it out of his system (that’s all it is, that’s what it will take, get the edge off, as they say. This is what he tells himself). And then in the depths of the green-gray English countryside, after Crowley’s third miracle of the Arrangement, after watching Crowley heal and bless and reckoning that there must be, there  _ is  _ good in him, there just must be, and Aziraphale could not stop thinking about it. He went to Crowley’s cottage then. They took their time, that time. Shucked each other’s armor off like oyster-shells, worshipped the soft flesh beneath. The night sprawled into morning, it might have sprawled a week, Aziraphale does not know, he let himself lose track, lose sight of anything but the shift of Crowley’s shuddering hips, the startling gentleness of his fingers, the damp, exquisite press of his mouth.  _ This has to be enough,  _ he would think, when he could think,  _ I must take everything I can, because this has to be enough. No more, I cannot. Never, never again. They will ruin us both, they will take him from me.  _ He couldn’t say it, couldn’t put those words into the world, but Crowley must have known, because he gave him everything, and didn’t ask him for more when Aziraphale left in the morning. It has been nearly five hundred years. They have not spoken of it since. 

Three times. Three times cannot be allowed to happen. Three times cannot be written off. Three times is a habit, a practice, a choice. Aziraphale left Crowley’s cottage that day knowing he’s already shifted the line in his head, pushed out to the furthest it will go, and he cannot cross it again.

_ Toss you for Edinburgh.  _

_ (Would you, oh, would you? Get your mouth on me, in me, all over me. Take me apart, I have not gone very long without imagining it, not since the first taste of you. You look at me like you’d do anything for me, and in another world, I would give you anything you want back, anything you ever wanted. I’d remake this universe for you, keep your favorite plays around like you do mine, grow you a forest to scold, bring you whatever pleasure I can with whatever parts of me you please. I want you under my fingertips, I want you surrounding me, I want you within me, I want you in every way I shouldn’t.) _

_ Toss you for Edinburgh. _

“Blast,” Aziraphale murmurs under his breath. He waits until the play is over, gives it his very best round of applause, and sets off to a very familiar public house. 

He’s right where Aziraphale knew he would be, a tangle of angles and riverrun hair. His black velvet hardly stands out in the chaos and gloom of the place, where men jostle and spill drinks in their fervor to celebrate, to forget.  _ (Which are you here to do? You won the coin toss, got yourself out of work for the week, but there’s no joy in the slump of your spine, the tankards you’re buried in.)  _

Crowley is alone. Aziraphale isn’t sure what he would do if he wasn’t, if he was wrapped around a human, but he doesn’t need to find out tonight. 

“You have an apartment nearby, do you not?” 

Crowley starts, nearly upending his tankard. He turns on his barstool. His beard is dark-damp with ale, his cheeks mottled pink and his hair a mess, and Aziraphale recognizes the bolt that blazes through his own corporation: a twine of what is undeniably lust, along with what is undeniably love. They are inextricable, and they haven’t waned a whit in five hundred years of not a single true touch. 

_ I want you. Whatever you look like, whatever shape you take. I want you like I shouldn’t, in every era, in every continent, in every terrible outfit.  _

“Aziraphale? What’re you doing here?” Crowley peers at him, blinking through his ridiculous tiny glasses. 

Aziraphale cannot cope with pleasantries. It has been five hundred years, and he can’t spend another moment speaking out of the corner of his mouth. 

“An apartment. You have one nearby, don’t you?” No one is paying them a bit of mind, no one here in this common human den has any knowledge that there is an angel committing about eight mortal sins, crimes against the fabric of the universe, right there in their midst. Such a simple thing, ultimately, to want until there is nothing else but the wanting, until it comes to the fore, encompasses all else.  _ Just one more night, just one more, please.  _ He thinks it desperately, convincing himself he means it.  _ I’ll be done, I’ll be good, the terror that comes after, it will be enough this time. It kept me away for five hundred years, once, it can buy me at least another millennium, at least.  _ (Already he is bargaining, measuring. Already he knows this time cannot be the last, even though it must be. It  _ must _ be.)

Crowley straightens his spine. Aziraphale can hear the demon’s heartbeat thunder from where he stands, could pick it out of a lineup, would know it at the end of the world. Neither needs a heart, nor blood. Neither needs a cock, or any pleasures of sex. And yet they both walk this world with them. 

_ For you. Oh, help. It’s all only ever for you.  _

“I do,” Crowley says quietly. He swallows, Aziraphale watches the crevices of his throat shift. He shudders slightly, and Aziraphale can tell he’s sobering up, purging the alcohol from his bloodstream.  _ (Good. There can be no mistake, I only want you if you want me the way I want you. If you know what this means, what I am asking you to risk. To give me. To give up. It cannot happen again.)  _ “You want to see it?”

“Yes.” 

Crowley does not lean in, doesn’t make a move, but Aziraphale can feel his love, awakened in response. It blazes hopeful and tragic, impossible and  _ oh,  _ Aziraphale needs to take a steadying breath,  _ even brighter than before. _

“Are you sure, angel?” He lets a moment pass. “We can always just have a drink here, if you’d rather.”

Aziraphale stares through those glasses, where he can see those bright eyes, harvest-gold. They watch him, unblinking, and Aziraphale knows that he could walk away. That he always can, that he can take back his request, and that Crowley will be right there for him anyway. He would pretend it never happened, he wouldn’t lash out, he wouldn’t turn cruel. He’d show up for the next meeting of the Arrangement, keep his distance, keep it light. Crowley would love and keep his love to himself, forever, if Aziraphale chose to ask that of him. 

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.” And Aziraphale turns to leave the pub. 

Crowley is at his side a moment later, and they make a quick, quiet walk of the distance to his apartment. It’s small and spare but unsurprisingly cozy, two stories above a book bindery. Crowley’s residences always feel cozy to Aziraphale, even though they’re terribly decorated and strangely barren  _ (it is probably the love,  _ Aziraphale thinks miserably, numbly,  _ that’s why these awful places always feel so much more like home than anything, anything ever).  _ There is a hearth going, casting the apartment in a warm glow. There’s a stack of folios in the corner, tidy and enticing. There’s ivy creeping through the window, a little trough of soil too, herbs growing there, rosemary and thyme, a brightness of lavender. And there is a bed, just close enough to the fire to be warm. It’s unmade, indented in the length of his body.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley starts. 

“Get the door, please.”

Crowley snaps and the door latches immovably, a set of thick curtains cover the window. Aziraphale goes to him, hardly aware of his steps. He can feel Crowley’s love, he can hear Crowley’s heartbeat. Crowley has never, ever made the first move. Aziraphale knows Crowley thinks he, Aziraphale, is in more danger here, that falling is the worst that can happen, but if Aziraphale is in more danger it’s only because he will not live in a world without Crowley, he cannot. And yet, here he is, risking everything.

“We can’t,” Aziraphale says, a choked whisper. “They’ll destroy you. I cannot be this selfish, I cannot.”

There is only the briefest of pauses.

“All right,” Crowley says. He runs his long fingers through his sunrise hair, shifts his weight  _ (is it relief?)  _ “It’s all right, angel. We don’t have to. Ever. I’m not doing anything you don’t want to do.”

“It’s not about what I want,” Aziraphale hears himself say. Crowley’s lips are thin, damp from where he’s licked them, and they are trembling. “I cannot get you killed. I — I’m not worth that. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should leave, shouldn’t I?”

“Leave if you’d like,” Crowley says. His voice is very tight. He does not move, holds his hands very still. “Please, Aziraphale. Please leave if you’d like.”

Aziraphale looks at the demon. He is not being tempted, he knows that in his soul. He knows where this want comes from. 

_ Walking away from you is always the worst feeling I have experienced since I was created. _

_ That has to count for something, hasn’t it? _

“You don’t want me to leave, do you?”

Crowley is silent, but he is shaking now, Aziraphale can see it, can sense it, can feel the love thrumming from him, filling the air like an oncoming storm.

Aziraphale takes a step towards him. 

“Do you?” he asks again. He takes another step, and Crowley does not move away. “If you want me to leave,” he says, very close now, “I’ll leave.” Aziraphale reaches up, removes Crowley’s glasses, and his breath catches in his throat. Those lamplight eyes are terrified, and as desperate as Aziraphale’s own heart.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Crowley whispers.

Aziraphale kisses him and it feels like living for the first time in five hundred years. He kisses him so hard he nearly knocks them both over, flinging his arms around Crowley’s neck and pulling him as close as he can, his frilled collar caught and crumpled between their throats. Crowley keeps them upright, but only just, whimpering into it at first and then growling in relief and then his hands are everywhere, digging in Aziraphale’s hair, cupping the back of his throat, running over the cloth covering his back, his arms. 

Was it like this the last time? How could it be, when this is so specifically magic? Aziraphale feels alit and grounded at once, blazingly aware of his body in ways he never is. Crowley’s kissing him and kissing him, his mouth moving messy and quick, like he’s trying to gather as much of Aziraphale into him as he can before Aziraphale changes his mind. 

“I want you, but,” Aziraphale murmurs, and Crowley pulls away immediately. He’s panting, chest heaving beneath his black doublet, his hair a mess. He has one hand on Aziraphale’s waist, the other cradling his cheek, and his eyes are bright.  _ You know what I have to say. “ _ But this has to be it, Crowley. It must,  _ it must,  _ it’s too dangerous.” 

“Whatever you need,” Crowley says at once. His voice is terribly gentle, and Aziraphale can  _ feel  _ the heartbreak there, and his own shatters inside him. “Don’t worry about me, angel.” And he means it both ways,  _ don’t worry about what they’ll do to me if they find out  _ and  _ don’t worry about what I want, I’ll give you whatever you need,  _ and Aziraphale shakes his head at both.

“I do,  _ I do,  _ Crowley, I can’t do this, I shouldn’t have come, it’s so utterly selfish it makes me furious at myself, I—”

Crowley pulls him in and kisses him, tender and trembling. His mouth is soft,  _ kind,  _ the gentlest sort of heat there, a warming, a hearth. 

“Please don’t talk about yourself like that, Aziraphale.” His voice is low and quiet, and Aziraphale wants to listen to it always, wants it filling him up. It is the voice of his mortal enemy, and it is,  _ always,  _ the most beautiful thing he has ever heard. “If anyone gets it, I do.” Crowley traces a knuckle down the curve of Aziraphale’s cheek, his eyes brighter than before, there in the firelight. “It’s all right. One more night, angel, and never again.” He swallows again, holds Aziraphale steady in his arms, making Aziraphale feverishly aware that he himself, too, is shaking where he stands. The next words seem to come from deep within him, Aziraphale watches, lips parted, as Crowley digs them out from his skinny chest, offers them up. “Knowing that you want me too is more than I could ever have hoped for.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. “I want you.”

And then he’s kissing Crowley hard, walking them back until Crowley’s calves catch the bed. Aziraphale knocks them onto the featherdown mattress. Crowley looks up at him, his face strikingly unguarded, a mess of want and heartache and longing, and Aziraphale knows his own holds a mirror to it. He presses their bodies together—there’s too much fabric there, too many layers, they’re here, they’re doing this, there shouldn’t be anything else. Crowley’s hands are already at his collar, undoing the laces. He moves as if to place it carefully beside him, but Aziraphale wrenches it from him, throws it to the ground,  _ I want you right fucking now.  _

As he does, though, as he burrows his nose in the crook where Crowley’s throat meets his shoulder and breathes in the scent he’s been thinking about for five hundred years, he finds he does not want to rush. 

_ One more night. And never again. _

“Oh.” He feels Crowley’s hands traverse his back beneath its blue silk. “Oh, my darling.” Aziraphale kisses him slower, deeper, open-mouthed. He moans into it as Crowley slows to match his pace, lets his hands caress that throat, the red rivers of his hair. They let their bodies roll together, press up against each other, let the heat from their kiss spread through them.

_ What can I do with you that will last me eternity? How many times do I need you to fill me, how deep do I need to burrow within you, until I can stop wanting you? Until I don’t crave your mouth on me, until your expression, clutched in the peak of your ecstasy, no longer haunts my steps? _

“May I?” Aziraphale asks, his fingers fussing the soft buttons at Crowley’s collar. “May I undress you?”

“Why don’t I just—”

“No.” Aziraphale reaches for Crowley’s hand, which the other had raised to miracle the clothes away. He presses his lips to it, knuckle by knuckle.  _ Your hands are softer than you think they are, more careful. Thin but strong, and they’re shaking. And they’re reaching for me. Always, I think. I must memorize this, the way you hold me when I let you. When I ask you to.  _ “I’d like to take my time. What little of it we have.” 

Crowley’s face crumples, just for a moment, the weight of it crushing him.  _ And never again.  _ Aziraphale nearly cannot bear it, bringing him this despair, but then Crowley nods, squeezes Aziraphale’s hand in his.

“All right, angel. Go on then.” 

Aziraphale nods. He frees each button from its loop, exposing Crowley’s body in increments, the slim chest, the smattering of hair there, the dip of a not altogether unfamiliar waist. He shifts to undo the laces, slip off Crowley’s heeled shoes, unlace his breeches and pull them over his legs, and then he’s in hose alone, his full erection beautifully obvious through the fabric. 

“Before you go any further—can I?” Crowley asks, propping himself up on his elbows.

Aziraphale nods, but when Crowley sits up and begins working his buttons free, covering each newly bare inch of Aziraphale’s skin with his mouth, sucking gently, running his tongue over the skin, Aziraphale shudders and moans aloud. It feels too good, too bright and hot, terrible in its inextricable brevity. 

“Shall I slow down?” Crowley’s eyes are hooded with want, the gold spread right to the edges.

“No,” Aziraphale whispers. “I don’t want you to slow down, I just...”

“What is it, angel?”

He’s sitting on Crowley’s lap now, straddling his waist. Crowley’s hands wait on Aziraphale hips, warm and ready, and Aziraphale can feel him, hard, pressing up against him, refusing to move until Aziraphale asks him to. 

“I just know that once we start, I’m not going to want you to stop.” He has to say it, flayingly vulnerable as it is. He needs Crowley to know.

“Oh.”

“I know. I  _ know. _ ” He cups Crowley’s face in his palms, runs his thumbs over his cheekbones. “I asked for this. And I want it. I’m just...letting you know, I suppose.” He kisses him, memorizing, memorizing. The ridges of Crowley’s teeth, the thin bow of his lips, the way his tongue feels, hot and strange and perfect. “I want you to know. When I never say it again, when we can never have it again. I will wish we’d never stopped.” 

Crowley reaches up, coaxes the rest of Aziraphale’s clothes off, and Aziraphale does the same to him, until they are bare to each other, want pressed against want. 

“Thank you,” Crowley whispers. Even though they’re unclothed now, naked, even though he has the whole of the angel’s body to explore, he’s brought one of his Aziraphale’s hands to massage his scalp, the other gentle on the small of his back. “For telling me.” 

Aziraphale knows that Crowley will never forget it. It might be crueler this way, but he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer—and he knows too, as Crowley leans up to press their lips together again, that he will have to live with the knowledge that Crowley feels the same. 

Aziraphale wants sex, he wants it badly, desperately, he’s been thinking about it for centuries, but somehow when they’re tangled together, flesh to flesh, he finds just as much magic in their kiss, in their touch. They tumble across the bed, pressing back and forth, neither in control of the other. Crowley’s hands are warm, his impossibly long fingers caressing the rolls and curves of Aziraphale’s stomach, tracing through the hair on his chest, his stretchmark-striped thighs. Aziraphale has wanted this for so long he finds he hardly knows where to begin, he wants absolutely everything but it’s difficult to focus, to choose a place to begin, when he can just as easily lose himself in the sensation of Crowley’s touch. And he does, for what feels like hours and no time at all, he lets himself sink into the glory of it, the satisfaction too brief, the end always in sight, but the sheer vindication of being touched.  _ You want me still. Oh, you want me still.  _

Crowley isn’t silent about it. He isn’t loud, but as his hands work over Aziraphale’s throat, his chest, the heat of his inner thighs, he lets little moans and gasps slip through his lips, letting Aziraphale know just how much he has longed to touch, just as much as Aziraphale has wanted to be touched, and Aziraphale kisses those sounds from his mouth, starving for more and desperately, helplessly nourished.

_ I have never loved myself so much as I do when you are looking at me. Have never loved inhabiting this body, walking this earth, being alive as I am—not like this. This is worth everything. And if I could walk the world next to you, it would be a different one, it would. We would write meaning into it, our own, the way you bring new meaning to this corporation of mine, to this wretched heart. Where there was only quiet before, you make the most delicious chaos. There would be nothing of anyone else’s plan, if I could walk this world with you always. Take me to dinner, sit in the park, plant a garden, fall asleep on my shoulder. If only, if only. Miracles of our own making. _

“What do you want?” Crowley asks. His body is draped over Aziraphale’s, he’s propped up on his hands and nuzzling into Aziraphale’s throat. He hasn’t touched Aziraphale’s cock with his hands but his own rubs against it, hot and hard, and Aziraphale shivers, tilting up to meet him.

“Everything,” he says, uselessly. Crowley grins, a beautifully unguarded wreck of a thing, precious rare and spectacular. Aziraphale hears it first, the shift in the air, turns to see it, to brush his mouth to it.  _ I want to make you smile like that all the time. I’m greedy, so awfully selfish, I want it just for me.  _

“Gonna have to be a little more specific than that, angel,” he says, his voice an altogether unfairly sensual rumble, his breath hot there on Aziraphale’s cheek. But that voice wavers, the seriousness of the situation hitching his words too. The danger they’re in, the finality, the undeniable crisis of desire between them.

_ “Crowley!”  _ The word wrenches from his body. He wraps his legs around the demon and his arms too, gasps at the new points of contact, Crowley’s lithe body hot between his thighs. 

“I know.” Crowley kisses the words into his mouth, firm and devastated, hopeless and frantic in—in— _ oh, please, no.  _ But Aziraphale knows what it’s in, knows what it’s like to have his heart reciprocated just like this, to be seen and known, and— _ loved.  _ “I know.”

_ You make me feel loved, you make me know what it means. I didn’t before, I do now, and now I’ll never forget, I’ll always know what it is to be in your arms, the precise measure of what I’m missing.  _

_ What do I want? I want you just like this every night, and gentle or cranky every morning after, I want to know what you’re like when you wake up. I want you to love me out loud, I want to love you and never apologise for it, never have to hide it. I want to braid your hair, I want you to brush out my wings. I want to make breakfast with you and burn the toast, I want to scold you for the state of your terrible clothes. Fuck, I want to fucking marry you.  _

“Could—could I fuck you?”  _ Let me give you this, let me make you feel good, I want that, I want that as much as almost everything. I want to make you come, want to feel you tight around me. I want you everywhere, everywhere. “ _ To, er. Start, at least, I’d very much like to be inside you, if you’d—”

Crowley makes a broken sound, Aziraphale can actually feel his cock twitch as he says it.

“Y-yeah, angel.  _ Fuck.”  _ He lets Aziraphale push him down onto the bed, spreads his legs and lets Aziraphale slip a thick thigh between his slim ones, kiss him with too much tongue and nails scraping his scalp. “Not used to you talking like that.” 

_ There’s so much I would say, all the time. If I could. How I want you. How I love you, in every way I shouldn’t. I could fill another fucking Library of Alexandria with all the lifetimes of love I have for you. They’d burn that down too. _

“Er,” Crowley says, as Aziraphale nudges his thighs apart. “There’s. There’s oil, under the bed there.” His cheeks are pink as he says it, which is so absurd in this context Aziraphale actually has to bite back a watery smile.

“Are you honestly blushing at the prospect of lubricant even though we’re committing a sin so egregious it wasn’t even  _ written—” _

“Shut up, will you?” Crowley says, but there’s no snap to it, just an ache of fondness, the bite of anticipation.

The vial is near-full but not quite, the cork obviously removed with some frequency. Aziraphale swallows hard as he brings it up to the bed.

“I think of you, all right?” Crowley whispers. “It’s not enough, it never is, it never  _ helps,  _ it never goes away—I just want—I want—” He breaks off, blushing earnestly now, his pink ears clashing terribly with his hair.

“Oh, my darling,” Aziraphale murmurs.  _ Fuck, fuck, fuck. What cruelty is this? If only you didn’t want me like I want you, if I was a temptation, a fling, thumbing your nose at Heaven—if at least we could harbor these feelings for each other and not want to touch, but no, oh no. You want me like I want you.  _ He bends to kiss him. It feels exactly the same as the last kiss, it feels entirely new.  _ Never enough, never, never.  _ “Would it be alright if I—before the oil?”

“I—oh.  _ Fuck, _ Aziraphale, yeah…”

Aziraphale spreads his thighs, moves below his erection, and dips his head. At the first pass of his tongue, both of them give a sound like they’ve been wounded. Crowley is clenched tight, taut and hot, his cock dripping a pulse of precome, and arousal courses through Aziraphale like fire, like blood, and he knows he’s never going to forget this sensation, the terrible bliss of it. 

He rubs the soft flesh with his thumbs, spreads Crowley further for him, and slowly, carefully drags the flat of his tongue from stern to bow, until his nose nudges Crowley’s balls where they’re tight and drawn up below his stiff cock. He does this again and again, lost in a blur of it as Crowley opens by degrees, loosening for him, until he can gently press the tip of his tongue inside. Crowley moans, a mess of breathy  _ yeses,  _ his thighs shaking, long fingers clenched in the sheets. Aziraphale hoists those thighs over his shoulders and thrusts in deeper, reaching for his cock, too. Crowley rocks forward into the touch and Aziraphale lets him, lets Crowley fuck himself slowly on his tongue. His cock feels like a fucking godsend in Aziraphale’s palm as he strokes it, undeniably stone-hard and desperately vulnerable in its obvious want.  _ Everything, everything, let me give you everything.  _ Aziraphale is inside him, inside Crowley’s very body, in the most intimate place, and Crowley’s letting him, Crowley  _ wants  _ him here, loves it, in fact, as is very evident by his dripping cock. Aziraphale swirls and twists his tongue inside him, his lips pressed to Crowley’s rim, and he’s so hot and  _ good _ inside, tight and smooth and clenching, and Aziraphale feels his own cock throbbing almost painfully in response.

_ “Angel,”  _ Crowley says hoarsely, and Aziraphale understands. He rises, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and drips the oil over his fingers. A gasp catches in his chest when he sees Crowley’s expression. He’s a shipwreck at sunset, and Aziraphale cannot look away. A crash of agony and desire caught on his face, the gorgeous branch of his arm flung across his brow. He’s nearly all angles, but he’s curves and planes in surprising places too, the jut of his chin, the dip and swell of his waist. His hair splays in a tangle on the pillow, shimmering in the firelight. His chest is heaving, his cock slick and mercilessly hard against the dusting of hair on his stomach. His inner arms, his thighs are striped with pinkwhite stretchmarks, and there are more small scars than Aziraphale would have thought he’d allow, a map of the history he’s lived through, and every inch of him is so shatteringly beautiful Aziraphale is suddenly, among many other passions, positively furious he can’t have Crowley like this every single day. 

_ (Would you let me learn the map of your scars one day? Learn the trails of you, the mountain-paths and verdant valleys, the pocked craters from places that left their mark? I would take my time, memorizing the ridges and rolls with my mouth, my fingertips, etching the echoes of what makes you who you are into my body. Would you let me mark you too, if I asked? Only with love, my darling, let me leave my love in you, would you let me write a memory into your skin? Tell me, tell me you won’t forget.) _

“Is it all right? If I open you up with my fingers now?”  _ Please, please, already I miss being inside you. _

Crowley opens his mouth but no sound comes out, he nods slowly instead, like he’s moving through molasses. Aziraphale fidgets.

“I need to know for sure, please. If you’re not entirely—but then, if it’s only that you’re rather speechless right now—”

Crowley nods harder, and then manages one small word.

_ “Please.” _

When Aziraphale slips a fingertip inside him, Crowley gives a loud sound and bears down immediately until Aziraphale’s buried in him. He’s sun-hot and tight inside, soft and pulling him in.

“How does that feel?” Aziraphale hardly recognizes his own voice, breathless and strange. He curls his finger, watches Crowley’s brow furrow, his mouth fall open in response.

“Too— _ fucking _ —perfect, angel,” Crowley pants out. “Another, c’mon, I can take another, I want you inside me  _ now,  _ please, I want you to fuck me—”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, pressing another finger inside and fucking Crowley slowly with them, “yes,  _ yes.  _ I want you, do you know how good you feel? Do you have any idea how badly I—my dear, do you have any idea how hard you make me?” Crowley  _ whines,  _ his arms flung over his head, bracing himself on the headboard, fucking himself on Aziraphale’s fingers in earnest. His eyes are heavy with lust but open, watching Aziraphale, and Aziraphale meets his gaze, unflinching. “I can’t believe you want my cock just as—as  _ fucking _ badly as I want to give it to you.” 

“Ah fuck,  _ now,  _ won’t you?”

“Are you sure?”

Crowley manages to arch an eyebrow.

“I quite honestly,” he says, clenching around Aziraphale’s fingers, “have absolutely no idea how I can prove it to you any  _ fucking  _ further. Am I sure, angel, for the love of— _ ah!” _

He gives a gasp as Aziraphale pulls his fingers free, slicks oil messily onto his cock. He bites his lip as Aziraphale positions himself at Crowley’s entrance, pushing his thighs back and kneeling between them.

“Like this?” Aziraphale asks. “Or would you rather—”

Crowley grits his teeth, seizes Aziraphale’s thighs, and pulls himself onto Aziraphale’s cock.

“Like this,” he whispers. “Yeah, angel. Like this. Come on, all the way now.” Crowley squirms to pull him in deeper, and Aziraphale, already breathless from the sheer fucking pleasure of it, falls forward, his palms on either side of Crowley’s throat. Crowley reaches up to touch his index finger to Aziraphale’s lower lip. “If you want me, come and take me.” 

“I want you,” Aziraphale says, and slowly, carefully, buries himself to the hilt. They stay like that for a moment, an eternity, rocking very gently but mostly just buried, connected, forehead to forehead. 

It has never been like this. Last time was closest, but there is a deliberation here, now. Aziraphale has put it out into the world:  _ I want you, enough to risk everything. Not as a mistake, or to tell myself I’m getting it out of my system. I want you, and I haven’t stopped. I want you, and I will never touch you again for the rest of our lives. _

“And this,” Aziraphale murmurs, bending to ghost his mouth over Crowley’s, “how does this feel?” 

“Perfect.” The same word as before, but there’s a heavier weight to it now, a shimmering, undeniable truth. Crowley pulls his legs back farther than he should comfortably be able, something snakelike perhaps, some minor miracle, Aziraphale does not know, does not care. It allows him to sink his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair, pull him close and kiss him, as Aziraphale thrusts into him deep and slow and awfully gentle, to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.

They kiss until Aziraphale wants to prop himself up better, to snap his hips just a bit harder, but mainly just to watch. Aziraphale fucks him and his face shifts, his whole body does. His silly beard is damp with sweat and spit, it sticks to his chin. The muscles of his throat work as he makes soft, beautiful sounds. (He moans a bit at the thrusts that hit home just so, but he also lets out these breathy little gasps when Aziraphale pulls back nearly all the way, either in anticipation or if that too is its own pleasure.  _ Remember this, memorise it, take every bit in. _ ) When he manages to open his eyes—and he does, almost surprisingly often, Aziraphale realises he might be watching too—they’re brimming with desire and pleasure and unmistakable, blazing love.

“I would do this forever, do you know that?” Aziraphale catches himself saying. Crowley gives a small, high moan in response, his fingers tightening in Aziraphale’s curls. “I can’t stand that I can’t, do you know, this is too good. You must feel it too, don’t you? How—how could I stop, how can I stop when I can’t wake with you in the morning? How can this be the end, when it feels like we’ve only just—only  _ just _ begun?” Every word feels like a wound, but Aziraphale can’t help it. The want shining through him makes him reckless, a crisis of desire, centuries of buried longing brought out into the bright, bright light. He thrusts and thrusts and the pleasure spikes through his body but his heart finds no relief. It suddenly becomes terribly clear that this is the end. That there will be no other time, and Aziraphale feels frantic, that if he keeps experiencing the profound joy of pleasuring Crowley with his cock he’ll never be able to stop, never be able to tear himself away, could watch the shift of the demon’s face as Aziraphale moves inside him, forever and ever and ever until the earth is forgotten, until it’s just the two of them in the universe, drifting through space in eternal bliss. 

But it’s not just the two of them. Aziraphale stutters his hips to a halt. 

“Are you all right?” Crowley asks, dazed, then seems to shake himself slightly. “Sorry, what a stupid question.”

“No, no, my—er.”  _ My love. My love, my love, my love.  _ “That is—would—would you finish inside me?” Perhaps this will give me some semblance of relief, of completion, he thinks miserably, but he doesn’t believe it even as he thinks it. It will make it worse. It will make it worse, but he wants it anyway. 

“Fuck, of  _ course.”  _ Crowley reaches up to kiss him, to let Aziraphale slip out of him, to roll them over. As he moves it is like each new, beautiful, intimate angle of Crowley is its own fresh torment, Aziraphale presses his mouth to the ridge of his shoulder, the sweatpools below his throat, the divot of his hip, brushes his flamelick hair aside to dig teeth behind his ear, until Crowley pushes him to the mattress and spreads his thighs. 

From the first pass of Crowley’s tongue on him, Aziraphale knows with absolute, damning finality that no, it is not enough. 

_ Toss you for Edinburgh indeed,  _ Aziraphale thinks desperately, as Crowley moans against him, nudges that brilliant tongue deeper. Just a throwaway comment and for it, Aziraphale risked both their lives, because he’d never have been able to stop thinking about this until he got it  _ (I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it anyway). _

Crowley coaxes him open with his mouth, with his clever fingers. Aziraphale intends to focus on everything, every quirk of movement, every twist and nudge of his tongue, every raw, rough sound Crowley makes, but then he’s drifting in a wreck of bliss until he’s tugging on Crowley’s hair. 

When Crowley pushes into him, they both shatter, a delirium of fresh sensation. Aziraphale wraps his legs around him, pulls him in as deep as he goes, still wretchedly trying to hold on to every feeling, even the ache as Crowley’s cock stretches him. 

Crowley fucks him slow and attentive, steady, adjusting to every sigh and flinch.  _ (I want you every way imaginable. I want to play at this with you, want you to be rough sometimes and gentle others, want you to tie me up and tease me, want to ride you until you spill in me so deep I can fucking taste it.)  _ Aziraphale watches the column of his throat, the cavern of his open mouth. His beard tickles Aziraphale’s chin, then scratches it, and his hands are so careful, one moving to traverse the expanse of Aziraphale’s chest, his stomach, before it curls around his aching cock.

“Tell me how,” Crowley says throatily. 

“A little looser, please, for right now,” Aziraphale says, strung so tight  _ (if only there was another time, I’d want you to grasp me until it hurt).  _ Crowley gets his grip right, then works up to a maddeningly expert rhythm, timing his strokes with his thrusts. He watches Aziraphale as he does, those lighthouse eyes a beacon, roving over his lips, his chest, his stomach, and Aziraphale knows Crowley is trying to memorise the same way he himself is.

Crowley could stay like this for days and days and days, Aziraphale is sure, and he’s so tempted to let him. It’s just too good, the slow drag and press of his perfect cock, his vigilant hands, the absolute worship of it. 

_ What does it mean that I have never felt more holy than right now? Than when I am like this, with you? _

Aziraphale nearly asks it aloud, stops himself just in time.  _ Don’t ask questions.  _ And he knows that each passing moment casts Crowley in deeper and deeper danger.

Against nearly every desire of his body, he bites his lip, cants his hips up.

“Fill me up, my dear,” he says, and it sounds like an elegy. Crowley meets his bright, damp, desperate eyes with his own and for the first time, his hips stutter, his strokes falter. 

“Okay,” he says, and that one simple word, that acquiescence, hits like a goddamn tragedy.  _ No wonder he prefers the funny ones, the love stories where they get together in the end, where everyone couples up and there are bawdy jokes and the miracle of a wedding. I want that too, darling, my darling, my love, I want to write you a better ending than this. _

Crowley grits his teeth, thrusts harder with his hot thighs and his clenching fingers, and Aziraphale cries out to meet him.  _ Oh, oh, yes— _

_ “Yes!  _ Yes, fuck,  _ yes, oh,  _ you’re magnificent, my darling, you feel  _ so  _ good, Crowley, fuck me just like that, just like that, I love it, my  _ love—” _

He says it. He says it, and the world doesn’t end in the next moment (this night is borrowed time), says it and there’s no going back, he says it and Crowley only chokes out a bitten-off sob, thrusting like he can’t help it, crushes Aziraphale’s mouth in a kiss. 

“My love, my love, my love,” and he doesn’t know which one of them is saying it now, murmuring recklessly into the kiss, a mess of teeth and love and what neither of them will later admit is the brink of tears. 

“You feel so good,” Aziraphale whispers, so open and wet and full. “I’ll never forget it, how good you feel, how good you make me feel.” Crowley makes a wretched sound, even as he thrusts home, even as his obedient fingers ceaselessly coax Aziraphale toward his edge.

This, Aziraphale will find many decades later, he does memorise.

Crowley’s dark pink lips, fallen open and shining in the firelight, the warm breath puffing from between them, sweet and earthy and his. His hair framing his lovely wreck of a face, tickling Aziraphale’s cheeks, making a close, desperate space filled with their shared air, each inhaling the other’s exhale, a rhythm of push and take. Crowley’s hand, pulling pleasure from Aziraphale’s body, his soft palm, his strong fingers. The flush of exertion on his chest, where he’s smattered with hair and scars, where his bones show through his shoulders, his ribcage. The muscles straining through his slender arms, his thighs, pressed so relentless against Aziraphale’s own. Every inch of Crowley inside him, the slick stretch of him, the blinding heat when he comes, how it doesn’t burn, how it feels—he thinks this madly, terribly, as it happens—holier than any blessing Aziraphale has ever performed. 

He’s so sure his own orgasm would be an afterthought, he’s so busy with the slowdown of time, drinking in as much of Crowley as he can, but when Crowley bites his lip and  _ tugs,  _ just there at the very denouement of his pleasure with Aziraphale so, so full, the sensation that crashes through him is the purest, sharpest bliss.

“Kiss me—” he manages to gasp, and it’s an angle that doesn’t make any sense, his thighs pulled back so far and Crowley softening inside him, but Crowley wrenches himself forward and slots their mouths together and it’s perfect, absolutely perfect, and it is not enough. 

“My love,” he whispers one last time, his eyes finally shut, Crowley pressing everywhere, and it is not enough. He’s still fucking coming, his cock pulsing onto Crowley’s hand and both their stomachs, their chests. It feels like every last bit of potential pleasure that Aziraphale contained is spilling out of him, once it’s gone there will be nothing left, just an empty vessel, built for duty. 

_ I don’t want that— _

A useless thought. 

Crowley is waiting. He’s loosened his grip on Aziraphale’s spent cock at last, but he hasn’t let go. Aziraphale wants to keep him here, wants to keep Crowley inside him until it hurts, until there’s only their shared ache, nothing, nothing, nothing else. Because there is nothing else, Aziraphale realizes. There’s no  _ getting your fill  _ of love. There’s only wanting more of it, wanting the way it shifts from longing to having, wanting the midnights and the mornings too, the silly banter that can finally end in kisses, reaching over the table and taking his hand. 

“It’s not enough,” he says at last, his voice cracking, and Crowley shudders above him. He finally, finally takes Crowley’s hips and pushes him out, the wretched pieces of his heart crying out, and then he says those final five words and he’s never, ever hated himself so much. “But it has to be.” 

Several shadows pass across Crowley’s face in quick succession. Something like hope, something like resignation, and what is unmistakably grief. 

“All right,” he says softly. He moves to lie down next to Aziraphale, then seems to think better of it and sits up awkwardly instead. Aziraphale rises to join him, every bit of his body trembling, only in part from the aftermath. “Can I, er.”

“What?”

Crowley looks at him, and he’s never looked so vulnerable in all the millennia Aziraphale has known him, he nearly gasps aloud. With the heat spent between them, he’s just damp and sticky and shivering, all nervous angles and palpable ache.  _ I want to hold you, I want to hold you, I want to kiss the doubt away— _

“Can I tell you that was the best thing I’ve ever fucking felt in my life, or should I have kept that to myself?” Crowley says in a rush, and if Aziraphale hated himself before, he loathes himself now (though he knows, somewhere very deep down he cannot touch, that he’s directing his anger at himself because he cannot turn it Heavenward, cannot question the actual powers that keep them apart). 

“Better not,” he says, his voice just above a whisper. Crowley flinches and nods, and Aziraphale cannot bear to not at least reach for his hand, even though he knows that makes it worse, he knows, he  _ knows,  _ but he does it anyway, and when Crowley darts his gaze up to meet his and lets him thread their fingers together one last time, he knows that some things are worth it. “And I’d better not tell you that I feel exactly the same. My—my dear.”

Crowley nods again. Gives one last squeeze of his hand before pulling away to stand by the fire, snapping and miracling all their clothes back on, not a spot of mess.

“But it has to be,” he echoes. Flashes a shadow of his smile. “God, you’re right about that.” He runs a hand through his hair and Aziraphale  _ aches,  _ the hunger deep inside him, nowhere near sated. “Well. Have a good time in Edinburgh, angel.” 

He pauses, narrows his eyes.

Aziraphale presses his lips together, busying himself with the arrangement of his frill (it’s impeccable, all his clothes are. Crowley had been paying attention).

“Waaait a minute,” Crowley says.

“Hmm?”

“That’s not what got you all—for Hell’s  _ sake,  _ Aziraphale, it’s not even an expression yet!”

“That is  _ very  _ far outside of the point,” Aziraphale snaps at him, his ears pinking. 

“I think you made it quite the point indeed, angel.”

“It wasn’t  _ just  _ that, I’ll have you know—”

“Sure, but it got you thinking about it, didn’t it? You know I didn’t  _ mean—” _

“Yes, Crowley, I know!” And despite himself, despite everything, a small, helpless grin is spreading across his face, mirroring the one on Crowley’s. 

_ “Toss you for Edinburgh— _ fuck,” Crowley chuckles, shaking his head. “I’d better watch my mouth around you.” 

“Yes, you  _ very  _ well better,” Aziraphale says, and the ache hasn’t dulled, but there’s a bittersweet warmth there too.  _ (Thank you. For lightening it, for teasing me. This is what I can’t lose. I want everything, but I’ll take you however I get to keep you.)  _ “Not like you’re  _ much _ better, dear,” he can’t help but add.

“What?” Crowley drawls, loping to lean on the table. He wrenches the cork out of a flagon, takes a swig, holds it out to Aziraphale, who strides over dramatically and takes a significant gulp of his own.

_ “Age does not wither him,”  _ he declaims, and Crowley’s cheeks flush a deeper pink, “ _ nor custom stale his infinite variety.” _

“Your point?”

“Antony and Cleopatra doesn’t get performed for another six years, my dear.”

“Details,” Crowley waves his hand, takes the bottle back.

“And Cleopatra uses different pronouns,” Aziraphale persists. 

“Yes, well,” Crowley murmurs, tilting his head, nudging Aziraphale’s temple with it. He takes another gulp, smacks his lips. “So d’you sometimes.” 

“And you,” Aziraphale affirms, “so I suspect you only used those particular ones to match my current preference? To make sure I, er. Didn’t miss your meaning.” He takes another drink of his own. It’s very good wine.

“All right, all right.  _ That  _ one was on purpose, I’ll give you that. Toss you for Edinburgh though, that’s all you, you filthy, gorgeous creature.” Crowley reaches for the bottle again, but Aziraphale puts it on the table and seizes him into a kiss. It’s wine-soaked and messy, a breach of a promise, and it lasts just long enough for Crowley to process what’s happening, to slip his tongue past Aziraphale’s lips, to wrap his arms around him and hold him and hold him and hold him. 

Crowley is the one to pull away. He wrenches them apart. Allows for just one moment of desperate, panting gazing into each other’s eyes before he blinks, runs a hand through his hair, and rearranges Aziraphale’s frill.

“Do you like it?” Crowley asks softly. Clears his throat before he goes on. “Antony and Cleopatra. I reckon it’s a fair shade better than Hamlet, but give me Midsummer Night’s Dream any day.”

“Do you know,” Aziraphale says, toying with his frill, “I think I’m starting to prefer the funny ones myself.”

There’s a smattering of banter, of nothing at all, until the wine is finished. When Aziraphale leaves at last, he feels a little bit lighter, even though the weight of wanting inside him is just as heavy as before. 

*

He goes to Edinburgh, performs the demonic work, the years go on, and so does the Arrangement. They do not kiss again, and they don’t face retribution from either head office. 

_ You want me too. _

_ And you’re not going to be taken from me.  _

_ It’s not enough, but it’s more than I thought I’d get to have.  _

_ And it’s better than the alternative. _

Crowley seems to share this mindset. The flirting is kept to as much of a minimum as they can keep it, and though Aziraphale feels Crowley’s flares of love more and more frequently, he bites his lip and refrains from acting on them. They don’t touch, not even when the world shakes with war again and again. Not even when their paths bring them to the tulip fields outside Amsterdam, the cliffs of Moher, a creperie outside of Lyon. They don’t touch, and Aziraphale falls deeper and deeper in love each day.

And then, the world nearly ends. 

And it doesn’t.

And it’s four hundred and eighteen years later. They saved the world, and then they saved each other, wearing each other’s bodies. 

*

**The Ritz, 2019**

Aziraphale shifts, as he swallows down the last of his parfait. Crowley’s chattering on about marmosets this time (one of the many things they’ve saved) and he’s sitting differently, Aziraphale can’t stop watching, can’t help but lean close. His own body feels different, ever since Crowley was inside it  _ (oh dear),  _ and he suspects Crowley feels the same. There’s a relief from his typical tension, the way he sprawls and splays in the seat.

The danger isn’t gone, but it’s lessened, more than it’s ever been, and more than anything, everyone knows the side they’re on now.

There is nothing to  _ hide. _

There is nothing to hide.

Aziraphale approaches the thought carefully, it’s been emerging from the deep, starving recesses of his mind since they rode the bus together, since Crowley asked him to stay and he thought it meant forever (he’s quite relieved to have his bookshop back, and yet). He hears himself banter back, hardly knows what they’re talking about, the unspoken thought like a buzzing in his ears, and Crowley tosses his head back and laughs in response, a full-bodied, beautiful spectacular thing. They’re surrounded by so many couples, so many awful humans and brilliant lovely ones too, and they saved all of it, down to the very teaspoons, and they could only have done it together.

That’s got to count for something, hasn’t it?

_ There is nothing to hide. _

So when Aziraphale polishes off the parfait, when Crowley raises his hand to the waiter—“if you’re done, I’ll get the check, angel”—Aziraphale coughs, pats his napkin to his mouth. 

“I can get this one, my dear.”

Crowley looks at him, nonplussed.

“But I nearly  _ always—” _

“Or,” Aziraphale says. He takes Crowley’s still-outstretched hand in his own. “I can toss you for it, if you like.” 

Aziraphale nearly falls out of his seat at the flood of love that pulses from Crowley, again and again as the meaning sticks, deepens, the enormity of it.

“Are—are you sure?” Crowley asks hoarsely. He’s shaking. Aziraphale squeezes his hand, rubs it with his thumb.  _ Nothing, nothing, nothing to hide. _

“Only if you’ll let me stay the night after, my love, only if you still—”

“Of  _ course _ I  _ still,  _ f-fuck’s  _ ssake,  _ angel—anything, anything, everything,  _ please—” _

“Oh, good,” Aziraphale says. He is nearly deliriously happy, buoyant with it. “So the bill, then, shall we—?” And he reaches behind Crowley’s ear with his free hand and pulls out a coin to toss.

Crowley only takes one open-mouthed beat to stare from Aziraphale to the coin (it’s actually the same coin, pocketed from that day in the Globe), before he gives a loud, disbelieving groan.

“You  _ bastard,”  _ he growls, his eyes gleaming. He snaps his fingers and far more cash than strictly necessary appears on the table, and then he’s pulling Aziraphale out of his seat and towards the door. 

“You haven’t tired of me yet,” Aziraphale says, merrily allowing himself to be tugged along after him. 

“Not gonna,” Crowley says over his shoulder. The breath of the night is cool and brilliant, the entire world spiraling open with possibility. 

“Suppose not,  _ infinite variety _ and all that—” 

And then Crowley spins right there in the park to kiss him for the first time in four hundred and eighteen years. A helpless, disbelieving smile and damp eyes all at once, and best of all, the unmistakable promise of infinitely more kisses pressed there in his mouth, and Aziraphale, once he catches a bit of his breath, can say, at last, without taking it back—

_ “My love.” _

And Crowley lets out a moan that’s nearly a sob, and says it back to him, punctuated between kisses, says it with his mouth and with his hands in Aziraphale’s hair, their bodies pressed there together, out in the garden for anyone to see.

“My love, my love, my  _ love—” _

And this, Aziraphale thinks, wildly, is enough. 

*

**A Cottage in the South Downs, 2024**

It’s the kind of love that puts everything else in perspective. There will always be evil, there will always be corruption in the head offices, the promise of war—all the horsemen, really—ever there in the offing. 

But there’s this, too.

There’s a cottage full of bookshelves and art from all of history. There’s a bed with a fluffy red tartan comforter, and enough pillows that they knock over the things on the bedside table when the bed gets a wrecking (which is terribly frequent, they should really just move the table further away, but they never think to). There’s a kitchen that Crowley keeps bustling, filled with herbs from the garden outside, and a garden that’s always in bloom, no matter the season. There’s brunches out in London or the village, and dinners cooked just there while Aziraphale works on translations (and doesn’t get distracted when Crowley makes the dinner wearing an apron and nothing else, absolutely not, he isn’t the one who requests that outfit and they haven’t broken several dining tables because of it). There’s trips round the world, to the Cliffs of Moher and the tulip fields outside Amsterdam, off to Alpha Centauri and yes, the Globe too, and they get to kiss everywhere they ached to in the past, to remake memories of longing with fresh, comfortable love. There’s Crowley rolling his eyes as Aziraphale works on new magic tricks for the birthday parties of children in the village, there’s Aziraphale cringing as Crowley shouts and snarls at the peonies. There’s Anathema and Newt over for tea and cards (poor Newt hasn’t seemed to cotton on that playing with a witch, a demon, and an angel means he’s almost always going to lose unless they take pity on him), and the Them over to play with Crowley. They’ve taken quite the shine to him, which Crowley grumbles loudly about, but then he takes them to the shore and they find little sea creatures together, fossils too, splashing about in joy and jokes and discovery while Aziraphale basks on the sand with a book and the towels, grinning on in a love so big it feels almost like disbelief.

And then the embrace of night is a welcome thing, when they fall into each other’s arms and touch in every way they’ve ever wanted,  _ infinite variety,  _ ceaseless and tender, and theirs, and they wake in the morning, tangle again, and breathe each other in.

Yes, there will always be evil in the world, danger just there.

But there is this too, and that matters. That matters more than anything, even the end of the world. 

When it happens, it’s three years to the day they moved into the cottage, nearly five years since they averted the apocalypse. 

Aziraphale is humming merrily, going through his catalog of books of prophecy from Scotland, noting where he’d like to journey next with Crowley to track down some first editions, when he hears a call from the garden. 

“Could you come here a minute, angel?”

“One minute, dear,” he calls back. He notes his place in his ledger-book, and dusts his hands off on his trousers. He moves through their cottage, so full of his things and Crowley’s—a home, in a way nowhere else ever was.

Outside, the sun is shining unusually bright for the time of year. The air is fresh, heady with seabreeze and the smell of growing things in the garden.

Crowley stands there, beneath the apple tree. He’s in his typical gardening clothes, cutoff overalls and a black crop top, a big floppy hat over his hair too (he’s let it go about as long as it was in the 1600s, though mercifully he hasn’t brought back the goatee), and Aziraphale beams, picking his way to him as quick as he can without trampling any of the flowers. 

“What is it?” He already suspects he’s only been called out for a kiss. He’d be more irritated if he’d been reading (which Crowley knows), and if Crowley didn’t look so preposterously handsome there in his ridiculous outfit. As he approaches, however, he can tell Crowley’s big smile is trembling. “Oh—my love, what is it?”

“Er,” Crowley says, his voice higher than usual. He clears his throat. “Just wanted to know where you wanted to go to dinner.” 

“All right,” Aziraphale says, mystified, this doesn’t seem to be the extent of it. “Perhaps the Greek cafe tonight again, unless you’re tired of it—”

“Nope, not tired of it.” Crowley bounces slightly on his heels, Aziraphale can see a muscle in his throat working. “But I was thinking the sushi place.”

“That’s fine with—”

“Why don’t I toss you for it?” Crowley interrupts, speaking a little too loudly. He pulls out a coin, hand still shaking. Aziraphale’s eyes widen. He chuckles, relieved to be in on the joke. Crowley does love to surprise him like this, to use memories from their long, long lives of yearning and rewrite them into their new, precious life of love, and Aziraphale adores it every time. 

“Please do, my dear,” he laughs with a wink, stepping closer. 

Crowley looks at him  _ (he still looks a bit off, what in the world—?) _ , gulps, and tosses the coin in the air. Aziraphale’s eyes follow it as it flips and falls into Crowley’s fist, so it takes him rather longer than it should to realise, when Crowley opens his hand, that it is no longer a coin, but a ring.

He still doesn’t fully catch on until Crowley sinks to one knee. 

“Oh.” 

Time seems to have slowed, and has the crash of the waves always been so loud? Aziraphale’s knees have gone so weak he no longer has any idea how they keep him upright. 

“Didn’t drop the ring, so that’s not a bad start! Though saying that bit aloud probably makes up for it, and I should shut up now. Oh, fucking shit. Er.” Crowley takes a shuddering breath, runs his free hand through his hair, and Aziraphale’s heart is bursting in the absolute best way. “Wow, I had this all planned and I can’t remember any of it! Um. I suppose the important bit is that I love you. I haven’t said that bit yet, that’s important. I love you, Aziraphale, I hope you know, I hope I’ve made that plain. I mean I say it every day but I hope you  _ know.  _ I love every bit of you, down to your damn magic tricks, down to the buttons of your vest, down to your toes and your good heart and I don’t know why I said toes, but it’s true, them too, all of you,  _ Jesus,  _ I’m terrible at this—”

“You’re not,” Aziraphale croaks, and he lets his knees give way, sinking onto them so their eyes are level. “You’re— _ perfect _ —I couldn’t possibly be more grateful, I—oh my goodness, oh my  _ goodness.  _ Please go on.”

“Yeah?” Crowley asks hopefully.

_ “Yes.”  _

“Oh, shit. Okay. Er, well. I love you. Very much, more than I thought it was possible to love... _ anything,  _ really, and I’m such a mess of the good love you give, I’m still getting used to it, you know, how you make me feel  _ good _ , and known, in the best ways. And it took us so, so, so,  _ so _ long to get here, but it was all fucking worth it, every minute of heartache, if it meant I get to wake up next to you in this cottage every morning for as long as I can, if it means that whatever comes next we face it together—and I don’t want anything to  _ change,  _ that’s not what this is, it’s perfect as is, I just—want absolutely  _ everything  _ with you, you know? And if you want this too, I want this—”

“I want this,” Aziraphale blurts out, his hands coming to Crowley’s cheeks, smoothing back his hair, needlessly adjusting the strap of his overalls, “oh, Crowley, I want this.”

“You do?”

“I do!”

“Excellent!” Crowley says, dazed, tipping forward like he’s about to kiss him, but then he rocks back onto his knee. “Ah, fuck, though. Still need to ask you properly.”

“Oh—oh, yes—”

“Gotta get that bit right, I wanna—”

“Crowley,  _ please—” _

“Will you marry me, Aziraphale?”

_ “Yes.” _

This kiss goes on, and on and on. There is no need to stop, not ever. They only barely remember to get the ring onto Aziraphale’s finger before he tackles Crowley into the soil, gets those overalls off, miracles the neighbors to mind their own business, and makes love to him right there in the garden until nightfall. 

**Every night onward**

Aziraphale will look across the room, across the bed, across the table, wherever they are, and see his love there, wearing a silver ring to match his own. 

And every single night he knows, at last, that this is so much more than enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i hope you liked it. check out my other fics and talk to me about ineffable kisses on tumblr @ letmetemptyou <3


End file.
